{"product_id":"this-brilliant-darkness-a-book-of-strangers-9781324075196","title":"This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers","description":"\u003cp\u003eKnown for immersion journalism that is more immersed than most people are willing to go, and for a prose style that is somehow both fierce and soulful, Jeff Sharlet dives deep into the darkness around us and awaiting us.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis work began when his father had a heart attack; two years later, Jeff, still in his forties, had a heart attack of his own. In the grip of writerly self-doubt, Jeff turned to images, taking snapshots and posting them on Instagram, writing short, true stories that bloomed into documentary. During those two years, he spent a lot of time on the road: meeting strangers working night shifts as he drove through the mountains to see his father; exploring the life and death of Charley Keunang, a once-aspiring actor shot by the police on LA's Skid Row; documenting gay pride amidst the violent homophobia of Putin's Russia; passing time with homeless teen addicts in Dublin; and accompanying a lonely woman, whose only friend was a houseplant, on shopping trips.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEarly readers have called this book \"incantatory,\" the voice \"prophetic,\" in \"James Agee's tradition of looking at the reality of American lives.\" Defined by insomnia and late-night driving and the companionship of other darkness-dwellers--night bakers and last-call drinkers, frightened people and frightening people, the homeless, the lost (or merely disoriented), and other people on the margins--\u003cem\u003eThis Brilliant Darkness\u003c\/em\u003e erases the boundaries between author, subject, and reader to ask: how do people live with suffering?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"W. W. Norton \u0026 Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50654116806930,"sku":"9781324075196","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_3b136d1e-8f1e-4baa-98e7-ebc19efb8255.jpg?v=1733372260","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/this-brilliant-darkness-a-book-of-strangers-9781324075196","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}